Many said Americans would never pay to download songs from the Internet. But online music sales of individual songs hit the 2 million mark in a single week this past February, according to Geoff Mayfield, who oversees the famed Billboard music charts. Online music stores, such as RealNetworks' Rhapsody and Apple iTunes, are apparently here to stay. For as little as 88 cents per song, these services will sell you all the latest chart-toppers, and if you're running broadband, you'll be listening to new music in a matter of seconds. "This is absolutely an avenue for the future," says Mayfield. "It's one of the ways music will be sold for a long time."

Yes, you can still log on to a leading file-sharing service and download many popular songs without paying a penny. Ever since the rise of Napster in the late nineties, millions of people have used file sharing to swap music collections for free over the Web. (See "File Sharing,") But the major record labels view such music swapping as copyright infringement. A record label suit managed to shut down Napster in March 2001, and they've been working to shut down copycat services ever since. Meanwhile, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sued more than 3,500 individual file sharers in the past year.

When the RIAA first announced it would sue ordinary consumers, many abandoned file-sharing services out of fear. According to Internet research firm Nielsen//NetRatings, traffic on services like Kazaa and Morpheus dropped by 15 percent the week of the RIAA announcement.

People still wanted convenient access to music online, though. So rather than smothering digital music entirely, the music industry finally devised ways to let people buy songs online. Labels began licensing songs to companies that would then sell them over the Internet for a small fee.

Most of these services use downloadable applications you install on your hard drive, but some, such as Wal-Mart Music Downloads, are merely portals you access via a Web browser. The obvious benefit of downloading songs from these stores is that you can do so without fear of legal action, but that's not all. Unlike the big file-sharing services, online music stores aren't a breeding ground for viruses. You can rest assured that the songs you download will be crystal clear. Plus you can read up on and get recommendations for new music, and even sample songs before buying them.

"It's a real shopping experience," says David Fry, a well-known e-commerce guru and head of the e-commerce consulting firm Fry Inc. "There are always new promotions. You can see what the top downloads are. If you're interested in Johnny Cash, you can read his biography, see who influenced his music, look at their music, and preview any songs you like."

Typically, these services sell songs à la carte. iTunes still charges 99 cents a track. Wal-Mart charges only 88 cents. But some stores, such as Napster 2.0 (related only by name to the defunct file-sharing service), also offer subscriptions. You pay a small monthly fee, usually around $10, and you get access to the store's catalog. As a subscriber, you can move songs onto your hard drive, but you can't burn them onto a CD or copy them to a portable music player. To do that, you must buy the song outright.

This summer, says Billboard's Geoff Mayfield, weekly song sales surpassed 2.7 million. That's still a far cry from sales of CDstraditional album sales topped 11.3 million per weekbut there's little doubt Americans are willing to pay for online music.